A sacrifice

Yesterday morning I had an email from the website Family Search.  They sent me a link about Pearl Harbor and the information that I had a relative who died in the attack.

I was intrigued and clicked around and found out a story.

This is Alva Dowding Walton.  He was my great grandma Jaynes' (a.k.a. Grandma with the Brown Eyes) cousin. (So not a very close relative.  I'd never heard of him, but I wish my great grandma was still around so I could ask her about him.)

Eight days after he graduated from high school, he enlisted in the Navy.

I have a senior in high school.  How would I feel if he enlisted in the Navy eight days after graduation and went to the Pacific?

In late November, he wrote his mother a letter describing sharks he saw in the ocean.

On December 7, 1941, he was killed.  He was nineteen.

2500 people died in the Pearl Harbor attack.  He was only one of them.  Like so many others, he was young and fresh faced and had a future full of promise.  He had a mother.  

It breaks my heart a little to know about this previously unknown relative.  He represents so many who died for the cause of freedom.  I'm grateful to every one of them.

And their mothers.